Huguenots

The Huguenots were a Protestant religious group in France that followed Reformed Calvinism. The Huguenots were descended from northern French Protestants who were inspired by John Calvin, and they made up 10% of the population in 1572. From 1562 to 1598, the Huguenot nobility rose in rebellion against the royalist government and its Catholic feudal subjects in the "French Wars of Religion", as the Huguenots were concerned about religious persecution at the hands of the Catholics. The wars ended with the Edict of Nantes, which granted autonomy to the Huguenots. During the 1620s, a series of Huguenot rebellions led to the abolition of their military and political privileges, and the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 revoked the legal recognition of Protestantism in France and led to the Huguenot population decreasing from 900,000 to 1,500 individuals, according to the (albeit biased) King Louis XIV of France. By 1774, French Calvinism was almost completely wiped out, and the bulk of Huguenots moved to Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, or overseas colonies.